The Mary Celeste Syndrome

by John Pinkney

  Beaming sycophantically, airport executives clustered at the steps to wish Loewenstein a successful flight. It was unusual for management to go to such lengths to please a customer, but the multi-millionaire scarcely noticed the fuss. For more than a decade now, he had been accustomed to fawning deference wherever he travelled.

  Only weeks earlier, on a business trip to New York, he had enjoyed (or endured) a reception bordering on hysteria. Idolatrous newspapers had variously described him as a ‘genius’, ‘the greatest industrial innovator of the age’ and (accurately enough) ‘the confidante of presidents and kings’. The Herald Tribune even asserted that he had offered to shore up his native Belgium’s struggling franc with an interest-free loan of $US50 million - prompting the embarrassed tycoon to call a press conference to deny the story.

  His protestations received relatively scant coverage. Americans were far more intrigued by the splendour of his arrival in Manhattan. He had crossed the Atlantic aboard the liner Ile de France, sharing with his wife Madeleine the ship’s premier de luxe suite. Adjoining suites were occupied by the couple’s guests, the Count and Countess de Grunnes and the Count and Countess de Montelembert. Also occupying cabins were the Loewensteins’ 11 personal manservants and maids, and 15 secretaries. The latter were a necessity if the multi-millionaire hoped to keep his manicured fingers on the pulse of the international empire he controlled.

  * * *

  However, on this evening’s plane journey to Brussels Alfred Loewenstein was travelling light - aided only by a valet, a secretary and two stenographers. The luxuriously appointed private aircraft took off without problems and by 6.10 p.m. was cruising at 4000 feet above the Dover coast.

  What happened next remains doubtful. But investigators subsequently assigned to the case did manage to cobble the employees’ conflicting accounts into a vague consensus:

  The stenographers agreed with the secretary that at about 6.20, or possibly 6.30, Alfred Loewenstein had excused himself to use the lavatory. He walked to where it was situated, in a small compartment at the plane’s rear. After passing through the compartment door he turned left into the washroom. Opposite, on the right, was one of the aircraft’s exit doors.

  Half an hour later, when the tycoon had not reappeared, his valet, Fred Baxter, went to look for him. He knocked at the washroom door but there was no answer. Tentatively he edged the door partly, then fully, open. The room was empty.

  It took Baxter less than a minute to check the rest of the plane. Then he raised the alarm.

  Alfred Loewenstein, friend and confidante of presidents and kings, had vanished - impossibly - in mid-air.

  Leaving his co-pilot in charge, Donald Drew checked the exit door. It was firmly shut - elementary proof that Loewenstein could not, deliberately or accidentally, have stepped out of the aircraft to his death. Unless, of course, he had been gifted with the ability to return and close the door behind him. Drew (according to some interpretations) then panicked. He turned the plane around and perilously landed it on a beach - running, with the valet, to a nearby farmhouse to ask for help.

  Police, followed by representatives of the nascent civil aviation authority, arrived quickly. At first the captain and others aboard seemed curiously reluctant to reveal the missing man’s identity. But under a sergeant’s stern questioning one of the stenographers broke down and stammered the name Loewenstein. Within the hour the beach was aswarm with journalists and photographers.

  Several days later the body, ravaged by sea-lice, was washed up on an English beach. Despite the cadaver’s advanced decomposition, pathologists were able somehow to conclude that the financier had been alive when he hit the water. The coroner returned a verdict of presumed accidental death, whereupon Madame Madeline Loewenstein became free to arrange a burial in Brussels.

  The ‘Man-Shaped Shadow’

  The coroner’s finding generated storms of scepticism. His decision was entirely based on the assumption that Loewenstein, intending to re-enter the cabin, had accidentally stepped through the exit door instead. Doubters argued that the eardrum-shattering din of a door being opened on a plane in mid-air would immediately have alerted everyone on board. Further, the air-pressure at 4000 feet is so strong that even a party of wrestlers would have struggled to move the heavy door. Several groups of muscular men - determined to prove the inquest result nonsensical - took similar planes to 4000 feet and bravely tried to shoulder open the exit. All failed.

  Rumours buzzed everywhere. An American columnist seriously suggested that the pilot Donald Drew had somehow murdered his employer by pushing him, with superhuman strength, from the plane. Drew, said the rumour-spreader, was not only involved in an affair with Madame Loewenstein, but hoped to marry her and share in the dead financier’s fortune. However, in the real world beyond the gossip pages, no remarriage occurred.

  Another persistent, and even more bizarre, story concerned a shadow or silhouetted image that Loewenstein was said to have left on the aircraft’s inner wall. This perfect outline of the man suggested that he had somehow melted through the fuselage before plummeting to the cold ocean below. Nobody saw the silhouette. The authorities, said rumour-mongers, were keeping the shadow secret.

  In life, Alfred Loewenstein had been feted like a movie star. His countless friends included captains of industry, members of the European and British aristocracy, sporting champions and even some of the leading film actors themselves. It was surprising therefore that two weeks after his death only 16 people attended the funeral in Evere, outside Brussels. Madame Loewenstein, who had travelled the globe with him and expended a huge sum on his resplendent tomb, was absent from the burial ceremony. And she never got around to hiring a mason to carve her husband’s name on the marble slab at the tomb’s entrance. Quite deliberately, it seemed, she consigned him to an unmarked grave.

  A trail of tragedy followed the financier’s death. His pilot Donald Drew died of cancer several months after his employer was interred. Loewenstein’s only child was killed, age 30, in a plane crash. The valet, Fred Baxter, was found in a hotel room with a bullet in his skull. A coroner ruled that the death was suicide - but some newspapers wondered whether it might be a sinister echo from the tycoon’s past.

  After his descent into the sea, Loewenstein’s financial empire quickly crumbled, leaving numerous investors bankrupt. He had fallen not only from the sky, but from a financial firmament in which his star had faded with extraordinary speed.

  Famous UFO Puzzle ‘Solved’.

  But then…

  In August 2005 Canada’s Great Lakes Dive Company issued a startling announcement.

  The company’s chief executive Adam Jimenez said he and colleagues had discovered wreckage of the US Air Force F-89 Scorpion jet which had vanished in 1953 while pursuing a UFO.

  The GLDC organisation provided photographs of the relic which, it said, lay on the floor of Lake Superior under 75 metres of water. Nearby was a ‘teardrop-shaped object’. It bore evidence of damage, conceivably caused by collision with the aircraft. All pictures had been taken with submerged equipment.

  Jimenez said he was seeking Canadian government permission to dive to the site and examine both the puzzling object and the F-89, in which, he believed, the remains of the pilot and his navigator might be found.

  The announcement first appeared on the internet as a purported news story from Associated Press. It created a furore, prompting film companies to clamour for documentary rights. Before long, many believed, the mystery surrounding at least one UFO case would be at least partially resolved.

  In my book Alien Airships over Old America I describe the original incident thus:

  The tragic Great Lakes disappearance occurred on 23 November 1953. When operators at Kinross Air Force Base Michigan detected an unusually large blip on their radar screens, they could not imagine what kind of plane might be producing it. What they did know, however, was that it was flying over Soo Locks in restricted airspace, indicating that it might be an ene
my craft.

  The commanding officer at Kinross alerted his opposite number at Truax Field in Madison, Wisconsin. The ‘unknown’ had to be identified immediately. Within 100 seconds two young pilots were aloft in a Northrup F-89C Scorpion jet interceptor. At the controls was Lieutenant Gene Moncla, 26, holder of a Bachelor of Science degree from Southwestern Louisiana Institute. Moncla had interrupted his medical studies to serve as a pilot in the Korean War and was now on temporary assignment to Truax airbase. He was married with two small children. Sitting behind him was the jet’s radar operator, Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson, 22.

  Guided by a GCI (Ground Control Intercept) system, the jet streaked at 800 kilometres per hour into wintry darkness. When it had reached 30,000 feet the twin blips on the glowing ground radar screen indicated that the Scorpion was in the vicinity of the unknown intruder. But then the gigantic ‘blip’ changed course and moved away at colossal speed. The controller reported the object’s new bearing - and Moncla pursued it out over Lake Superior.

  The chase lasted 30 minutes - and the jet seemed to be gaining - when the object suddenly changed course again, dropping an estimated 23,000 feet. GCI ordered Moncla to descend also, asking if he and Wilson could lock onto the target visually. There was no reply. Then, as the GCI crew watched appalled, the radar blips representing the jet and the unknown object merged into one.

  The object subsequently headed north, disappearing from the radar screen.

  Assuming that the Scorpion and the UFO had collided, the commander sent search and rescue crews equipped with flares to the scene. Perhaps Moncla and Wilson had managed to bail out and were floating even now in their lifejackets or on a self-inflating raft. In the bitter cold they were unlikely to survive more than a few hours. Rescue planes and boats scoured a 260-square-kilometre area throughout the night and all the following day. But they found no bodies and no wreckage. Pilots Gene Moncla and Robert Wilson had vanished without trace.

  Ground crew at Truax were convinced that the pilots had been swallowed by a UFO. News of the incident leaked to a local newspaper and then became international news. Characteristically, the US Air Force tried to scotch the media’s claims. After an investigation it announced that the radar blip had not been as large as originally reported - but had in fact been created by a Canadian Air Force C-47 flying to Sudbury, Ontario.

  This explanation held firm for several hours - until the RCAF issued a press statement denying that the ‘unknown’ had been one of their aircraft.

  The USAF cast around for another way of hosing the crisis down. The ever-reliable Professor Donald Menzel, Harvard astronomer and dedicated UFO debunker, came to the rescue. Probably, he surmised, Lt Moncla had suffered a vertigo attack and simply crashed. And the merging radar blips? Plainly the radar equipment had registered an automatically created ‘echo’ which had blended with the Scorpion’s radar returns.

  As would also occur in later cases, journalists sought a transcript of the final conversation between Eugene Moncla and his ground controllers. The air force refused the request on security grounds.

  The young fliers’ families were hurt and dissatisfied. They had talked privately with the pilots’ friends - some of whom had followed the drama at first-hand - and were convinced the air force was not telling the truth. The widow and parents of Gene Moncla responded in the only way they could, by placing a remarkable message on his memorial in a Louisiana cemetery. Its simple text confirms their conviction that Gene Moncla and his co-pilot died while pursuing an unidentified flying object:

  In Loving Memory of

  Felix Eugene Moncla Jr,

  1st Lt United States Air Force.

  Born October 21, 1926.

  Disappeared November 23, 1953

  Intercepting a UFO over Canadian Border as Pilot of an F-89 Jet Plane.

  • • •

  Understandably, in 2005, the dive company photo that created the greatest excitement was the tear-shaped object (some commentators called it almond-shaped) rearing from the lakebed about 60 metres from the plane. Jimenez said that he and colleagues had lowered a remotely operated vehicle to the assumed UFO, and confirmed that it was metallic. The visible portion of the object - about five metres long and three metres wide - bore a damage mark that seemed to match the missing wing on the F-89 Scorpion. Behind the ‘UFO’ spread a wide trench which it might arguably have carved after colliding with the Scorpion and hurtling with it into the lake.

  In his statement Jimenez said, ‘We have confirmed the F-89’s identity using several techniques. First, the general design of the aircraft is a complete match. Our scan shows an upswept tail section which is a design characteristic only of the F-89 (hence the model name ‘Scorpion’). Second, this aircraft has a wing pod. Also a design peculiar to the F-89. Also the canopy location is a match and there are also other exact matches. There were no other F-89s or similar aircraft over the middle of Lake Superior.’

  The public, UFO analysts, and increasingly persistent film companies waited impatiently for the 2006 dive season and its promise of further discoveries. But during this weather-enforced hiatus the number of doubters began to grow. Why, many asked, was the US Air Force showing no apparent interest in retrieving its long-lost pilots from the lake? Forget the fact that the alleged crash site was in Canadian territory and that the dive company was keeping the exact location secret - surely America’s military machine was powerful enough to demand the information and act on it. As in all cases involving UFOs, the USAF evasively answered reporters’ questions on this issue.

  And then came the shock. Adam Jimenez, chief executive of the Great Lakes Dive Company, fell silent. The man who had sparked the interest of such prominent investigators as Lynda Moulton Howe had suddenly become uncontactable. Sceptics immediately asserted that the entire affair had been a hoax. Believers - albeit wavering ones - suggested that Jimenez might have gone incognito to avoid the increasing pressure from organisations wanting to buy his story. He preferred to get on with the important work of exploring the lakebed.

  In November 2006 James Carrion, international director of America’s Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), published the results of his investigation into Adam Jimenez and the dive organisation. Carrion reported that:

  Michigan’s Division of Corporations had no record of the existence of a ‘Great Lakes Dive Company’.

  In an earlier conversation, Jimenez had refused to provide him with the names of the firm’s principals.

  He (Carrion) could find no one who had had face-to-face contact with Jimenez. All conversations were via cellphone or email.

  During an interview on George Noory’s radio program Coast to Coast the UFO researcher Linda Moulton-Howe said Adam Jimenez had graduated from Kettering Technical School in 1990. The registrar’s office told Carrion that no one of that name had ever attended the institution.

  Jimenez stated several times that he was seeking the Canadian government’s permission to explore the crashsite further. Michael Johnson, manager of the Heritage Operations Unit, which issues all such permits, said no one had sought clearance to check on the F-89 or a mystery object.

  Carrion concluded: ‘In summary, MUFON, after many hours of work by a number of our dedicated field investigators, has not been able to substantiate any of the Great Lakes Diving Company’s claims. These claims will remain doubtful until those making them come forward with more information and definitive proof of their purported discovery.’

  As this book went to press it seemed that the fates of pilots Gene Moncla and Robert Wilson would remain a mystery after all.

  The Corpse that ‘Spoke’

  In August 2005 the Italian clairvoyant Maria Busi received a large colour photograph through the mail. It depicted Chiara Baffi, a 28-year-old woman who had been missing for three years. In a covering letter the woman’s devoted parents said they were hopeful she might still be alive. They asked whether the psychic, whose name had recently been given to them by friends, could h
elp find her.

  ‘My first glance at the photo told me the poor girl was dead,’ Maria later told Il Messaggero newspaper. ‘But I hesitated to reply to her family immediately because I had no idea how she had died, or where her body could be found. This information seemed difficult to obtain - and it was not until the following week that my concentration on the case produced a result.

  ‘I heard in my head a voice which I knew belonged to Chiara Baffi. She described a heavy downpour that had caused a landslide, sweeping her car into Lake Como. She had been unable to escape and drowned in the driver’s seat. He showed me where the car lay, deep in the lake.’

  Maria Busi notified the missing woman’s parents and went with them to police. But senior detectives refused to spend public money searching for a car when the only evidence was an alleged conversation with the dead driver.

  Chiara’s parents paid a private firm to look for the car. Salvage divers retrieved it, with Chiara in the front seat, from the spot the clairvoyant had predicted.

  ‘Without Maria’s directions we would have had no hope of finding the vehicle,’ salvage team leader Remo Bonetti said.

  An embarrassed police department declined to comment.

  Lost, in a Tantalising Triangle

  It was one of the oddest anniversaries ever celebrated. In November 2000 an assortment of small towns in southern Vermont, USA, joined to commemorate the fact that no unexplained disappearances had occurred in their vicinity for 50 years.

  Before that, the story had been chillingly different. Between 1920 and 1950 so many unsolved vanishings occurred around Glastonbury Mountain that historians eventually named the area the Bennington Triangle, after one of the towns affected.